Jeff Carter Vs Dustin Brown

You responded to the post where I asked for examples of Clarke negatively affecting young players' careers. Even if Clarke could have put him in the AHL, (which John already stated he was ineligible) but still kept him in the OHL, that still wouldn't show him negatively affecting any young player's career as Carter has yet to show any negative side effects of the "Bobby Clarke affect." If Clarke has such a bad record developing young players, I'm sure someone can find a much better example throughout his 16 years of being a GM, than Jeff Carter, who still looks like a top-notch prospect.

No, playing in the OHL this season isn't what could by definition be called "negative" but some forward planning that could have had him playing in the AHL this year would have been more positive. If he didn't get much playing time for the Flyers last year that isn't a big negative either. Maybe it was a financial issue.

Right now with a new CBA possibly in place before July he maybe can sign Carter for less money, but on the other hand he may be 6 months away from re-entering the draft.

No, playing in the OHL this season isn't what could by definition be called "negative" but some forward planning that could have had him playing in the AHL this year would have been more positive. If he didn't get much playing time for the Flyers last year that isn't a big negative either. Maybe it was a financial issue.

Right now with a new CBA possibly in place before July he maybe can sign Carter for less money, but on the other hand he may be 6 months away from re-entering the draft.

No it was far better for Carter to play 70 games last year getting big minutes than to fight to dress for games and playing time in the NHL.

Taking a quick look he played in 31 games last year, but it looks as if he missed 40 games due to injury.

If he would have played 70 or so games then it was probably the right move, if however a bunch of those 50 games he didn't dress for were due to being a healthy scratch it was probably a mistake.

He had a severe ankle sprain that kept him out of the line-up for most of the second half of the season. It didn't heal quickly, and each of his comeback attempts would be derailed by the re-occuring pain and loss of muscle strength.

1) He tends to air his (bad) feelings in the press instead of keeping it in the dressing room. eg. Cechmanek after the Ottawa-Flyers series. / Coach Neilson and the cancer thing.

He simply said Cechmanek would not be back. It was big news at the time simply because Hitchcock gave the standard losing postseason spiel about how he had confidence in Cechmanek and that he would be back next year. If anybody's wrong there it's Hitchcock, as Clarke has the final say on all personnel decisions, still it's not like Hitchcock wasn't relieved as hell when he got the news anyways.

I don't recall him ever saying anything bad about Neilson, just that Craig Ramsay was a better fit for the team. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but replacing a coach with cancer is never going to be media friendly. He did what he thought was best for the team, not his public image.

Neither Lindros or Roenick have ever claimed that Clarke has pressured them into playing hurt. They wanted Lindros to sit when he had his last concussion with the Flyers, as they had a commanding lead in the series. Lindros came back anyways and Scott Stevens ended his career with the Flyers. Roenick is a warrior and refused to even acknowledge the concussions he received in the playoffs until after the season. Kind of hard to rush a player back from injury when the coaching staff doesn't even know about it, no?
Dave Babych was the only player to ever claim that Clarke pressured him into playing too early. His story was pretty shady, especially bringing it up several years after he retired when his money was getting low.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kings16

3) He tends to be impatient with players & coaches. He brings them in and out faster than anyone else in the League. eg. Justin Williams, Barber.

I'll agree that we have not been successful at finding a coach until Hitchcock. It wasn't so much impatience, as much as it just became blatantly obvious after a while that each choice was the wrong one.
Justin Williams was moved for Danny Markov, which wasn't being impatient but merely making a deal for a position that was in great need.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kings16

4) He lets his personal feelings get in the way of business.

The only occasion which I can say that his personal feelings actually got in the way of business was the Lindros situation. He may have strong personal feelings, but this is the only time where it actually did get in the way of progress.

There's been some bad decisions when talking about coaches and you may not agree with his personality, but I still see very little direct effect from all of this on to actual players themselves. Either way, I still feel that merely having Clarke as GM is not even close enough to being sufficient to make an impact on who will have a better career.

Primeau, LeClair, Recchi, and Desjardins were all Flyers during their primes so whether or not we "officially" developed them is of little consequence to me. If he can use players that he developed (or was developing) to trade for better players, it's completely fine by me. I guess you don't think we developed anyone from the Handzus and Esche for Boucher trade, but I'd say it was damn good asset management. Trading Williams for Markov is another example. It's not like these guys we traded weren't partially developed by us, it's just that Clarke could upgrade the team by trading these guys as they had enough value even if they weren't fully developed. If Clarke wasn't successfully developing these players, (or at least being on the right track) then he'd have nothing but picks and prospects to trade, which in turn would not be nearly enough to acquire the quantity and quality of players that he has received in trades over the years.

Interesting. Quite relavent to the Carter/Brown debate. The Kings did almost the exact opposite.

It's definitely relevant to the debate between the two, but you'd also have to consider that Brown was widely accepted as one of the most NHL-ready guys in the draft, as well as the depth of the team they were drafted by at their own individual positions.

Actually Pitkanen's concussion came from an elbow from Taylor up against the boards behind the net.

The reason Carter isn't in the AHL is that hes a 19 year old Canadian. Vanek is Austrian, Suter and Parise are American. There's rules preventing Canadians under 20 (I think) from leaving the CHL. It's so the league doesn't lose all its big players.

Actually, that isn't true. The Flyers could have signed Carter and he could have played in the AHL because the agreement between the CHL and the NHL expired.

The reason the Flyers didn't sign Carter was because of the expiring CBA. The Flyers wanted to see what the new CBA is going to be like first. However, I have a funny feeling that it is going to be a move that is going to come back and bite them in the backside.

The fact that the Flyers went out and signed RJ Umberger to a rookie max deal and then held off on signing their two elite prospects may leave a bitter feeling with Richards and Carter. Personally, I think it was a bad decision to make. Hopefully, they can get deals done with both Richards and Carter because it would really suck if we lost them all because we tried to do things on the cheap.